"go home and get your guns"-Stokely Carmichael April 4,1968 in Washington D.C.

I had a habit of sitting in the kitchen and eating my breakfast while the radio was turned on to the morning news.

The morning of Friday April 5th, 1968 I heard the account of a radio reporter (from UPI) who hid under a car while mobs rioted in the street around him.

He sounded scared and he had reason to as rioting broke out in the nation's captial following the assassination of Martin Luther King late on the evening or April 4th and early on the morning of April 5th.

Police allowed looting and only made felony arrests.

The violence picked up again on April 5th in mid-morning with Black Power leader Stokely Carmichael declaring "white America has declared war on black America. Carmichael called for blacks to get guns again.

When asked if he feared for his life, Carmichael declared: "The hell with my life. You should fear for yours..."

Police kept falling back in the face of the mobs with orders not to shoot. Stores were wrecked and merchandise hauled away. Black smoke rose over parts of the city. Downtown stores within two blocks of the White House were targeted.

Late on the afternoon of April 5th Mayor Walter Washington called President Johnson for federal troops.

Four thousand regular Army and National Guard troops were deployed in the city. Some took up positions at the White House with others setting up machine gun emplacements at the Capitol.

Six were reported dead by late on the evening of April 5tb with over 700 arrested.

it’s amazing how the democrats will turn this election into a racial referendum with the attendant, further, criminalization of “white people”. they have a tendency to leave these propaganda booby traps everywhere.....including the “credit crisis” and heaven knows what else.

“”go home and get your guns”-Stokely Carmichael April 4,1968 in Washington D.C.

I took Stokely’s advise without hearing him or knowing he said this for weeks.

On April 4, 1968, I was a health care salesman and was calling on my customers at Walter Reed.

This was before cell phones, ipods and other instant communication. I had heard nothing about the riots even thought they were happening close to Walter Reed. Early in the afternoon, a NCO, who was a friend as well as a customer said that I needed to get home to Centreville, Va asap or I might not get home.

He told me about the riots and how they had closed the grounds to entry and had armed guards at the gate to keep rioters out if they tried to come into the grounds. He rode with me to the front gate and talked to the MPs.

A MP sarge came to me and told me that they would stop traffic so I and others could get on Georgia Ave to go north to the Beltway and then drive home to Virginia. He told me not to stop unless the cops told me to until I got home. He wanted to know if I had enough gas to get home and I did.

Then, he and some of his MPs stopped traffic both ways on Georgia Ave so several of us could drive out. They did not allow any turns into the city. We were out and headed away in seconds. I saw the MPs hurrying back into the grounds at WR in my mirror.

When, I headed out on Georgia Ave, I could see smoke in my mirror. There was some rioting and looting going on Georgia and the side streets.

The Beltway was loaded like it would be during commute time instead of early afternoon. The normal less than an hour drive was over an hour. I stopped at a hardware store in Va and bought the last two packs of 12 gauge double oughts. I couldn’t call my wife as the circuits were busy.

When I got home to her and our 8 month old baby, she was in a state of near panic.

I took the plug out and loaded up my 12 Rem pump with the new shells. My wife had the Ruger 22 mag, I had bought her. It was loaded and ready. I had a scoped Ruger 22 semi auto with a brick of shells, and I loaded it and put boxes of shells on various window sills.

Shortly after my Mother called. She and my Dad had moved out to Fairfax to be close to us and the new Grandson. I told her that we were okay and for them to stay home after my Dad did an errand. I told him to walk a couple of blocks to a gun store and to buy a 12 riot gun, 30 cal Carbine and a 45 auto matic with ammo for them and some more 00’s for me and more 22 mag hollowpoints for me. He got a neighbor to drive him to the store, and they both bought guns and ammo and shared watches that night.

A few of my hunting neighbors and I set up a quick neighbor hood watch program and divided up the night into 3 hour watches.

Nothing happened in our area that night except for some looting in stores in a few of the nearby larger cities. DC looked like a war zone on tv, and it was a scary night.

The next day my parents drove to our home with clothes, food, their medicine and Dad’s new guns to stay until was safe to go back.

After the riots stopped, my parents decided to go back to Oklahoma. My Dad sold the carbine and riot gun to neighbors and made a good profit. He kept the 45 for the drive back to Oklahoma.

After that DC became an unsafe place. The anti war groups caused many problems. We left the area in 1970.

Although the riots were confined to specific small areas, with smoke from the burning buildings clearly visible from the suburbs, fear griped the entire metropolitan area. I recall parents meeting in my neighborhood in Bethesda to see who had guns, and how they might organize some defense should the rioters move out of the city, as many expect them to do. Being inquisitive teenagers, my friends and I tried to drive downtown for a closer look at what was happening, but we were turned back by troops in Jeeps that had set up a check point at Chevy Chase Circle. I remember also one of my friends, who had a older brother who was in the National Guard, told me his brother had looked down to find an arrow sticking out of the heel of his boot while he was standing guard at some intersection on 14th Street.

There was one leader at the time who did show greatness: James Brown, the hardest working man in show business. Unlike Stokley Carmichael, Brown appeared on television and made a direct appeal to those involved to go home and stop rioting. He was severely criticized for that by many other so-called black leaders at the time.

I was in Pittsburgh at the time and watched the riots from the roof of the VA hospital overlooking the downtown.

At first you would see a fire break out and the flashing lights converging on the fire which would rapidly fade out, only to be replaced by another some distance away.

Gradually, however, more fires erupted than could be responded to and they began to accumulate in some numbers. Eventually, the flashing lights disappeared altogether and the fires continued to burn without interference.

We found out later that the fires, for the most part, were the small businesses the inner city residents themselves depended on that were owned by brave immigrants, mostly Koreans.

Not surprisingly, those business owners never returned and the groceries, laundries and other neighborhood businesses never reopened.

I think you might have your dates confused since MLK wasn’t assasinated until 6 pm on April 4th. Rioting started around 10 pm in Memphis and didn’t spread to D.C. until Friday morning, the 5th of April.

I was stationed at WRGH at the time and when we reported for work on Friday morning in our hospital whites, we were told to go back and put on our fatigues. Unfortunately I had both pairs of my boots out being reheeled for an upcoming inspection at a civilian repair shop just a block off post. The walk thru gate next to our barracks was closed and locked for the first time in the 7 months I was stationed there because of the raised level of security. Consequently I was forced to dress combat fatigues and my dress shoes, which meant I was out of uniform. One of the MPs sent me to my company comander to get a dispensation and the CO “borrowed” a pair of boots from somebody and gave them to me. Even though they were 3 sizes to big, I didn’t complain!!

A good friend of mine that I worked with at WRGH had the day off and put on his civies and walked as far downtown as he could snapping 35mm pics all the way down and back. He did have trouble back into the compound in his civies, but eventually talked the MPs at the gate into letting him back in. I still have copies of the 36 pictures he took of the burning and looting in D.C.

Police kept falling back in the face of the mobs with orders not to shoot.

Therein lies the problem. A whiff of the grape applied early, would probably have fixed the problem. These are not trained troops, and as rioters go, not even high motivated rioters. Looters in particular are not interested in getting shredded for a case of beer.

19
posted on 04/05/2008 9:04:30 AM PDT
by El Gato
("The Second Amendment is the RESET button of the United States Constitution." -- Doug McKay)

I was 7 yo and remember seeing it all unfold on TV. My Dad was always very good and making me watch things that he thought I should remember later on. I just remembering being very glad that I lived in a small city in Ohio! That was probably the night I decided that liberals were crazy without knowing exactly then who they were.

No where near DC at the time, I was at DLI in Monterey but we were all confined to base. There were riots in neighboring Seaside that threatened to spread. Soldiers from Ft Ord were called out to reinforce the MPs at DLI and NPGS.

During this time I called back home to NY and was told that parts of Poughkeepsie were ablaze down by the river (and the train station). Don't know if this was an exaggeration but family members all gathered, armed, to protect the home and neighborhood of my uncle who lived in Poughkeepsie.

The Detroit Riots of 2007 were the worst in the USA in that era, at least until the Rodney King riots, I think.

Victims of the 1967 Detroit Riot At the conclusion of five days of rioting, 43 people were dead and 1189 injured. As in Newark, the majority of riot fatalities (79%) were black, shot by police and National Guardsmen for alleged looting, sniping, and curfew violations.

Of course Detroit had riots before 1967, like those of 1943. This is Wikipedias version of events.

The 1943 Detroit Race Riot was a race riot which occurred during World War II. The racial tension in Detroit during WWII increased as migration of blacks from the Southern United States to the industrial cities of the Manufacturing Belt accelerated.

The riot began on June 20, 1943, on Belle Isle (one of Detroit's largest parks) when roughly one hundred thousand Detroiters gathered to enjoy the hot Sunday afternoon. Hostile confrontations between young blacks and whites broke out throughout the day, and fights erupted on the bridge connecting Belle Isle to Southeast Detroit.

Rumors of race war roused whites and blacks, who both took to the streets near Belle Isle and in the downtown area and attacked passersby, streetcars, and property. Blacks in Paradise Valley (Black Bottom) looted white-owned shops; whites overturned and burned cars of black drivers on Woodward Avenue. The Detroit police, however, sympathized with the white rioters and were brutal to the blacks: 17 blacks were shot to death by the police, but no whites.

The riot came to an end once Mayor Edward Jeffries Jr. and Governor Harry Kelly asked President Roosevelt for help. In response, federal troops in armored cars and jeeps with automatic weapons drove down Woodward Avenue. The appearance of the troops with their overwhelming firepower succeeded in dispersing the mobs. Over the course of three days, 34 people were killed, of whom 25 were black. 675 suffered serious injuries, and 1,893 were arrested.

A hysterical white girl related that a nineteen-year-old colored boy attempted to assault her in the public elevator of a public office building of a thriving town of 100,000 in open daylight. Without pausing to find out whether or not the story was true, without bothering with the slight detail of investigating the character of the woman who made the outcry (as a matter of fact, she was of exceedingly doubtful reputation), a mob of 100-per-cent Americans set forth on a wild rampage that cost the lives of fifty white men; of between 150 and 200 colored men, women and children; the destruction by fire of $1,500,000 worth of property; the looting of many homes; and everlasting damage to the reputation of the city of Tulsa and the State of Oklahoma. -- Walter F. White, "The Eruption of Tulsa," The Nation, June 29, 1921

Still, you have to hand it to Detroit. I don't think you can find an earlier race riot in America than the 1833 one in Detroit:

Thornton Blackburn and his wife Ruth (or Lucie) were escaped slaves from Louisville, Kentucky. They had been settled in Detroit, Michigan, for two years when, in 1833, Kentucky slave hunters located, re-captured, and arrested the couple. The Blackburns were jailed but allowed visitors, which provided the opportunity for Ruth to exchange her clothes - and her incarceration - with Mrs. George French; Ruth was then spirited across the Detroit River to Canada, and safety.

Thorntons escape was more difficult as he was heavily guarded, bound and shackled. The day before Thornton was to be returned to Kentucky, Detroit's African American community rose up in protest. A crowd of some 400 men stormed the jail to free him. During the commotion that ensued, two individuals called Sleepy Polly and Daddy Walker helped Thornton escape to Canada. The commotion turned into a two day riot during which the local sheriff was killed. It was the first race riot in Detroit, resulting in the first ever Riot Commission formed in the U.S. Further, the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, Major General Sir John Colborne, refused extradition back to the United States, noting that a person could not steal himself.

The couple went non to live in Toronto and found the city's first (horse drawn) taxi service!

BTW: This book excerpt claims that Detroit 1943 was the last "classic" race riot where groups lined up by race and attacked each other. The focus of these riots was personally hurting people of another race. In contrast the riots from 1967 onward have been more focused on looting and destruction of property starting in black ghettos and radiating outward.

Of course even the modern type riots still feature outbreaks of 'old-school' style, as famously in the Rodney King riots when Damon Football Williams smashed Reginald Denny repeatedly with a brick.

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